The sad news that Network, the finest of all companies issuing vintage TV on DVD, has gone into liquidation is a double blow to anyone who finds intelligent grownup television drama from half-a-century ago preferable to today’s often pitiful excuse. Firstly, the other companies that competed with Network in its early days, such as Acorn and Simply Media, appear to have completely abandoned the DVD/Blu Ray market, meaning Network was virtually operating in a field of one that has few potential operators to fill its shoes; and secondly, Network’s eagerness to keep releasing physical product meant it was a superior option to those that have succumbed to the dubious advances of streaming, a system vulnerable to the vagaries of pop cultural fashions, and one that can edit or remove content without the consent of the subscriber if the puritanical arbiters of permissible material suddenly declare it ‘problematic’. The timing of Network’s tragic collapse was also strangely ironic for me personally, as the very evening I heard the news I’d just finished watching perhaps what could be called an archetypal Network box-set release, ‘Man at the Top’.
The wonderful thing about Network was that it not only released remastered versions of programmes that have survived in the public consciousness as classics via regular screenings on repeat channels, but also put out series that were popular in their day yet have barely been seen since, thus failing to stretch their reputations beyond their initial audience. ‘Man at the Top’ was one such series; produced by Thames between 1970 and 1972, ‘Man at the Top’ continued the life and times of Joe Lampton, the cocksure character created by John Braine in his 1957 novel, ‘Room at the Top’. When the book was filmed a couple of years after its incendiary publication, its literary impact was replicated on the big screen, lighting the blue touch paper for the ‘kitchen sink’ era that gave the British film industry a kick up the backside. Lampton was played with swaggering charisma by Laurence Harvey in the movie, but the roots of the cinematic social realism that ‘Room at the Top’ inspired lay in the theatre, primarily with John Osborne’s groundbreaking play, ‘Look Back in Anger’ in 1956. In a canny piece of casting, when Joe Lampton’s adventures were updated for the early 70s small screen, he was played by Kenneth Haigh, who had brought the eloquent antihero Jimmy Porter to life onstage in the original Royal Court production of Osborne’s play.
Joe Lampton is a beneficiary of post-war educational improvements and the social mobility that followed them, a working-class northern lad who took advantage of the opportunities available to him and transcended the limited horizons that had kept his parents tied to their humble origins. Brash, bullish and bright, once the ambitious Lampton can see this tantalising career path laid out before him, he seizes every chance he gets with a ravenous ruthlessness that mirrors the avaricious arrogance of the local self-made men who run the town – the councillors, mill-owners, and all the usual cigar-smoking Masonic movers and shakers; Lampton is desperate to get what they’ve got and he sets about it with little care for who he tramples over to get there – including women. Despite being involved with the older wife of a colleague, he also courts the boss’s naive young daughter Susan; the predictable outcome of that pre-pill period is a shotgun marriage that secures Lampton’s lofty place in the family firm. For many, that would be job done; but Lampton’s ambition stretches beyond the north; Yorkshire isn’t big enough for him.
When we rejoin Joe Lampton in 1970, he’s a high-flying management consultant, prowling the concrete jungle of the capital’s sky-scraping office blocks; he drives a flash motor, resides in the Surrey stockbroker belt, and is 16 years into a static marriage whose vows he doesn’t exactly honour. The odour of executive success proves to be an irresistible aphrodisiac to seemingly every woman he comes into contact with and I swiftly lost track of all the ones he beds throughout the series, most of whom are familiar faces from the 70s TV rep company such as Stephanie Beacham, Katy Manning, Ann Lynn and Janet Key. Joe Lampton is a fascinating character because he’s such a bastard, yet Kenneth Haigh gives us an utterly believable and honest portrayal of a man of his generation, background and class – warts and all. Whenever his long-suffering wife Susan (played with sympathetic weariness by Zena Walker) attracts male attention or appears to take a shine to a member of the opposite sex, Lampton reverts to caveman mode and all-but drags her back home by her hair. Yes, one didn’t have to dig too deep beneath the sophisticated veneer of the moustachioed waistcoat-wearing businessman-about-town of the era to reveal the uncouth backstreet ruffian with his arse hanging out of his pants; indeed, a semi-regular character played by Colin Welland (a coarse old school-friend from Lampton’s hometown) proves the one thing money cannot buy is class. Yet Lampton, by contrast, seems far more able to conceal his provincial shortcomings when mixing with the high and mighty.
Yes, Joe Lampton is a bastard; but he’s in an environment where he’s surrounded by bastards, many of whom were born with advantages he never had. This fact is made all the more stark when we encounter a character such as the one played in a memorable episode by Michael Bates, a good man married to a philandering, spendthrift wife he inexplicably worships; the character ends up as a casualty of the system when she leaves him for his best friend; he dies by his own hand because he lacks the clinical streak necessary to survive and prosper in the world he finds himself in. So, despite ourselves, we can’t help rooting for Joe Lampton because whenever he experiences a fall from grace, it’s usually been caused by an even more unlikeable, self-serving, amoral brute who puts personal gain in business above and beyond every other concern. The message is pretty clear that nice guys don’t make it all the way to the top. And once at the top, Joe Lampton soon comes into contact with the equally callous cold fish of hereditary privilege, something that finally impresses his overbearing, self-important, self-made-man of a father-in-law, Abe Brown.
To opportunists like Abe Brown, his son-in-law’s rise is a chance to feather his own nest, and he and Lampton’s aristocratic patron push him into running for Parliament. Lampton sacrifices the chance of genuine love rather than another one-night stand to pursue this aim and then walks away from it at the eleventh hour, belatedly realising the gold in the pot isn’t enough after all. The series ends on an uncertain note, though Kenneth Haigh’s portrayal of Joe Lampton received one final outing in a 1973 movie that followed the second series. Haigh is the only actor from the TV series to feature and although the film is an interesting extended episode, it doesn’t quite hit the same heights. Nevertheless, the fact the movie was included on the box-set of the series was a classic Network move; no other company would have bothered to complete the set like that. But Network always made sure its releases were of the best quality, not only picture-wise, but all the extras, the accompanying booklets, and even the original transmission dates printed on the flipside of the DVD sleeve. Nothing was left out; the company knew its niche audience and went out of its way to give it what it wanted.
I counted 66 Network releases amongst my DVDs just before penning this paragraph, and chances are there are a few more I overlooked. They range from children’s shows to grownup telly to movies and documentaries. The variety Network offered was never less than impressive, and one wonders now how many neglected series they may well have excavated in the future will henceforth remain locked away in vaults for good. Even streaming sites tend to stick to the obvious vintage shows that have been repeated to death; Network could always take you by surprise with what it exhumed, and it’ll be missed.
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The unconvincing argument for the tiresome trend of replacing iconic male characters with inferior female substitutes – whether that be a particular Jedi, a specific Timelord, or the non-binary individual at the helm of the USS Enterprise – rests upon a lack of ‘representation’ in the past. According to this jaded narrative, there were no leading women fronting movies or TV shows before Year Zero was initiated and therefore the guys have to be castrated to balance the books; the fictional heroes whose adventures kept more than one generation entranced were male, yet they were apparently pale and stale, a heinous situation that necessitated gender reassignment surgery. Let’s just conveniently ignore the ‘women’s pictures’ that kept Hollywood ticking over in the 1940s and propelled the likes of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck to superstardom, eh? Well, not only has this approach proven disastrous in terms of box-office receipts and small-screen viewing figures, but it’s also a dishonest act of cultural revisionism, dismissing pioneers that placed an authentically strong female character at the centre of attention.
Sometimes footage shot for the TV news that would’ve been shoved way down the pecking order when broadcast turns out to be far more fascinating in retrospect than whatever was grabbing the headlines. Joe Public going about his business or enjoying himself can provide a greater insight into how life was lived for the majority than whatever the President or Prime Minister of the day was up to. The fashions, the vehicles, the street furniture – all offer a window to a vanished world that is nevertheless remarkably recent in the grand scheme of things; and it is realising just how much the world we look out on day-to-day has visually altered within living memory that makes such footage so compelling. YouTube has proven to be a good repository for this people’s archive, and whenever I stumble upon another addition I tend to download it and stash it away for future use in my own DIY videos. A couple of months back, I rediscovered film of punters dancing the night away at the Hammersmith Palais in the early 1970s, something I’d downloaded years before and never done anything with; this uncut reel evidently trimmed for transmission ran for the best part of 25 minutes in its raw form, and I found it so intriguing that I wondered if the old-school ballroom venue was still with us. I quickly learnt it fell beneath the wrecking ball in 2007.
Watching an archive ‘Coronation Street’ of more than 50 years’ vintage the other day, I remarked to a friend that Ena Sharples’ face was like a roadmap of the first half of the 20th century; in the story imprinted on that fascinating countenance one could discern traces of the Great War, the Great Depression and the Blitz, to name but a few traumatic chapters that left a mark so indelible it would define that character and everything she represented for the remainder of her life. At the time Violet Carson was bestriding the nation’s TV sets as one of the medium’s greatest creations, the generation seizing the day in a way the generation of old ladies in hairnets and curlers had been cruelly denied was perhaps embodied in the contrasting shape of Mary Quant, a woman several years Ena Sharples’ junior, yet one who actually lived way beyond the lifespan of that character’s onscreen duration. It’s somewhat humbling to realise that when one of the late 20th century’s pivotal pop cultural architects shuffled off this mortal coil, she had actually reached the grand old age of 93, which perhaps serves as a reminder of how her generation has now superseded the one that fought the War as our most senior of citizens.
For all the talk in recent years of the UK ‘leaving Europe’, Britain’s membership of a certain European institution has nevertheless proven to be remarkably enduring, far more so than another renowned European institution – i.e. the one we opted out of in 2016 (the one that continues to be held up as both Messiah and Antichrist, depending where you stand). I’m talking about the EBU – that’s the European Broadcasting Union to those of you only aware of one European Union. Our membership of the EBU predates any economic alliance with the Continent, stretching all the way back to the early 1950s – long before satellites enabled live pictures from mainland Europe to be beamed into British living rooms, a time when we were reliant on cables buried deep under the Channel to relay the Eurovision Song Contest as it happened. In fact, we have the EBU to thank for our continuous participation in Europe’s premier kitsch event and gay night-out; had we not been one of the ‘big five’ countries making substantial financial contributions to the EBU, our woeful bottom three finishes in so many Eurovision Song Contests over the past couple of decades would’ve seen us relegated from the competition; and who over here would want to watch were we denied the edge-of-the-seat drama of seeing if the UK would manage to achieve nul-points?
The back end of the 20th century was fortunate – at least in terms of pop cultural retrospectives – that its musical produce was received by the largest audience; in the memory, therefore, events beyond the Top 40 are often soundtracked by popular song, which can happily enter into a marriage with moments from the wider world in serendipitous synchronicity. However, a febrile era whose songs have proven to be as much of their time as they have subsequently become timeless means a DIY ‘mix-tape’ intended to represent a turbulent period of the past can just as easily speak of the paranoia, instability and uncertainty of the here and now, especially when the here and now’s equivalent has no more impact on the wider world than a ringtone. So, to compile a collection of contemporary tunes reflecting the peculiarly melancholy mid-1970s in 2023 inadvertently sources a soundtrack which says as much about our today as it does all our yesterdays. And here is my track-list…
I suppose it’s only natural that a pop cultural age in which recycling is key should find more of interest in its past than its present; the annual roll-call of reissues and anniversaries of yesteryear’s landmark releases has become a Heritage Rock hallmark that exists alongside a glut of contemporary mediocrities without a sole original idea in their heads. And as these 21st century musical magpies freely beg, borrow and steal from the giants upon whose shoulders they squat, consumers are faced with a choice: do they buy into the lame imitation or invest in the original source material? The latter may have a vintage of half-a-century or more, but as the dividing lines between then and now that once used to matter so much to each generation have been whittled away by the Spotify playlist, it seems almost irrelevant that an album like Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ is 50 years old this week. It sounds as fresh today as it ever did. Just as the exquisite sonic quality of ‘Abbey Road’ has perhaps enabled that LP above all other Beatles releases to sound permanently fresh to every pair of ears that encounters it, the Floyd’s seminal 1973 release has an unprecedented aural clarity that effectively made it the first Compact Disc a decade before CDs hit the market.
For a generation, Dickie Davies was the face of sport on television, whilst for more than one generation John Motson was the voice of one specific sport on the same medium; that both should pass away within a week of each other is one of those timely coincidences that often occur and make my job easier. A rather heartless admission, true, but the number of times a paucity for inspiration re a Winegum post is salvaged at the eleventh hour by the death of a famous face is remarkable; even the recent post covering the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon was eased by the passing of Raquel Welch being announced as I was writing it. On the eve of taking a week’s break and busy cursing Wee Nicola for intruding upon my preparations, hearing a celluloid sex symbol of old had shuffled off this mortal coil meant a post I hadn’t intended to write could be completed with a tad more haste than if I’d had to delve even further into the Krankie career to pad it out. So, yet again the Grim Reaper came to my rescue. And, as the march of time proceeds on its relentless pace, the collective childhood furniture is reshuffled once more and continues to become more threadbare as another pair bites the dust.
A very early post on here – albeit one which had been ‘remixed’ following a previous appearance elsewhere – discussed the appeal of old monochrome movies during their BBC2 heyday as a Saturday afternoon alternative to sport; the title of said post escapes me, but I recall it was illustrated with an iconic shot of the young Lauren Bacall, and it’s one that continues to attract visitors to this day. I seem to recall it contained a recommendation in the comments section to check out what was then a fledgling digital channel called Talking Pictures TV. Once this obscure channel (abbreviated to TPTV) eventually became available on the Free View service and began to be featured in the bewildering labyrinth of Radio Times listings, I decided I’d check it out. Familiar with archive channels stretching all the way back to the cable era of the 90s, I expected the usual narrow range of obvious vintage shows that are routinely wheeled-out on an endlessly repeated loop. What a pleasant surprise, therefore, to discover some of TPTV’s prime-time programmes include the likes of ‘Public Eye’ with Alfred Burke, ‘Justice’ with Margaret Lockwood, and ‘Maigret’ with Rupert Davies.
Some characters that emanated from the pages of children’s literature during the medium’s century-long reign as the prime launch-pad for the imagination appear to be in possession of a remarkable durability that enables them to charm successive generations of young readers. The anthropomorphic animals from ‘The Wind in the Willows’, the cast of surreal eccentrics from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, Winnie the Pooh and his engaging sidekicks, Peter Pan and his nocturnal Neverland – all continue to sprinkle the same stardust onto the children of today as they sprinkled onto their parents, grandparents and so on. Most of these success stories have, of course, had their lives extended by being reimagined in other mediums that arrived later – primarily cinema and television; and the latter not only adapted these established franchises for a fresh audience, but eventually created franchises of its own. Some had impressive longevity, whereas others remain known only to those who watched with mother at the time. There are, however, a select few who have continued to wave their magic wands throughout the decades – and once even extended their omnipotence to the breakfast table.
Upon hearing of the death of David Crosby – coming so hot on the heels of Jeff Beck passing away last week – I remarked to a friend that the 60s generation had become their own Dorian Gray portraits, ageing and decaying before our eyes whilst their over-achieving 20-something selves continued to be their definitive public image, frozen forever in the high summer of youth. Crosby’s CV was a case in point, making his most fruitful recordings as a member of two key American bands of the era, The Byrds and then Crosby, Stills and Nash (with or without Young); but he always had a reputation as being something of an awkward sod. Indeed, Doris Day’s record producer son Terry Melcher worked with The Byrds during Crosby’s tenure in the band as well as Charles Manson when the latter had a failed shot at being a pop star himself; Manson developed a dangerous grudge against Melcher comparable to Adolf’s beef with Jewish art critics, but Melcher nonetheless once stated that given the choice of re-entering the studio with either Crosby or Manson, he’d opt for the future murderous guru.
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